Kinnan Keeps On Winning

Cancer Became The Latest Opponent To Lose To Joe Kinnan

BRADENTON -- He always did have a game plan. He always was scheming and scamming, trying to figure out the best, most efficient way to attack a problem.

For 33 years, as a college assistant and a high school head coach, Joe Kinnan's forte was always in the preparation. Rarely could the opposition come up with something that completely baffled him.

FOR THE RECORD - ********** LIBRARIAN'S NOTE **********Correct spelling for Jimmy Buffett.********************************************

Which is why it seems just a little bit comical sitting in his living room, watching this coaching legend grunt and groan and pull and tug as he fruitlessly tries to get a tack out of his rubber beach sandal. He's wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and a Gulf Coast breeze is whispering through the palm trees in his front yard. As he struggles with the tenacious tack, you can almost hear Jimmy Buffet singing in the background.

"Blew out my flip-flop."

All of those victories, all of the district titles and the state championships, and this is what it's come to for one of the greatest high school football coaches in Florida history: Being routed by a thumbtack.

"To heck with it," Kinnan says, giving up. "I'll get a screwdriver and a pair of pliers and deal with this later."

And there will be plenty of time later because Joe Kinnan, after spending an entire lifetime building character, molding lives and winning games, is retired. He took his wife, Linda, to New York a few months ago and they stayed in a hotel on Times Square -- something they've always talked about doing. They just returned from eight days in Aruba. And now he's got some yard work he's been meaning to catch up on for the last 20 years.

He's beaten everybody and everything there is to beat, including the cancer that showed up on a routine prostate exam midway through last season. It turns out that was the impetus he needed to call it quits after 20 years at Bradenton Manatee High School, where he compiled a record of 192-51, won 12 district titles, four state championships and sent countless players like quarterback Tommie Frazier (Nebraska) on to college.

KINNAN RUNS RIGHT OPTION

He attacked the cancer like his mammoth offensive lines used to attack opposing defenses: with the intention of pounding it into remission. As always, he was prepared. He did his research, he read, he talked to numerous doctors. Finally, after being presented with three options, he chose the most radical: Complete surgical removal of the tumor. That always was Joe Kinnan. Running the option; never leaving anything to chance. He was operated on in December and got a clean bill of health a few months later.

"They say the cancer is completely gone," Kinnan says.

He could have easily returned to the sidelines, but the cancer was really just an excuse, the push he needed to finally get out. Twenty years was long enough. Twenty years of teaching and coaching and planning and scheduling and adapting to kids who have more and more personal problems and less and less parental guidance.

"The coaching and camaraderie I'll miss, but the other 80 percent of the job is what knocks you back," Kinnan says.

Besides, he was at Manatee about 18 years longer than he ever thought he would be. He was the offensive coordinator at Eastern Kentucky's highly successful I-AA program when Manatee called in 1981. He took the job only because he grew up five blocks from the high school stadium at a time when Bradenton was nothing more than a quiet little fishing village. Manatee was his alma mater and the principal was his former high school coach.

His plan was to come back home, coach at Manatee for three years and then ease into a more lucrative, less stressful line of work. Except he was too good at what he did. Winning ruined his plan.

"My third year, we were 14-0 and state champions," Kinnan says. "Man, I was having the time of my life when we started winning like that."

The football team at Manatee had not a single weight when Kinnan arrived, and his first purchase was a York barbell and a 400-pound set of Olympic plates. From those beginnings sprouted the strongest, most monstrous offensive line the state had ever seen.

Friday night frights.

"When those guys ran on the field, it was like you could feel the whole stadium shake," a rival coach once said.

Kinnan, because of his background as a college assistant, stressed massive weight training before it became the norm. And he also brought a sophisticated read-and-react option offense to Manatee when most other state high school coaches weren't confident enough to use such a risky scheme.

"We tried to physically beat you up," Kinnan says. "Regardless of the outcome, we wanted the other guy to know that he had just been in a knock-down, drag-out fight."

The results were devastating. Manatee went from 4-6 the year before Kinnan arrived to averaging 50 points a game and going undefeated in his third season. In his fourth year, all three running backs ran for more than 1,000 yards and his quarterback threw for more than a thousand.